First steps

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Great advice.

Hard to implement.

Here’s one of many examples of how my brain works in quite the opposite fashion.

Okay, so I got accepted into graduate school! Yay!
Oh wait, so when does that mean I’ll be finished?
And what if there’s a semester when I can’t take a full load–how much will that set me back?
How am I going to pay back these student loans someday?
What if I try teaching as an adjunct and hate it?
What if my job gets cut before I ever finish school? Then what?
How am I going to get these dishes done, the floors swept, the dogs walked, and write this paper before the sun sets today?

My brain tends to hit play and then fast forwards through all the commercials straight to the ending. Sometimes it’s due to excitement. Sometimes fear. Ultimately, it’s Bethany trying to get one step ahead of God to ensure a suitable outcome since Bethany often believes that perhaps she knows best.

Thankfully, I’ve repeatedly learned (the hard way) that attempting to eat an entire elephant in one bite does not work. Indigestion occurs. Vomitting, perhaps. And enormous regret.

Instead, I’ve had the blessing of watching people I admire, who’ve figured out a thing or two about life and God, take one bite of that elephant at a time. Whether it takes days or years, eventually the elephant is consumed, and satisfaction is achieved.

For me, eating that monster one bite at a time or taking one step at a time, whichever analogy my mind wraps itself around that day, always feels better in the long run than trying to skip from A to Z. And ultimately, it comes down to trust. Do I trust God enough to take only one step right now without seeing the rest of the road in front of me?